Are You OK? Xiaomi CEO’s Awkward English Goes Viral, Sparks Debate

Billionaire Lei Jun, chairman and chief executive officer of Xiaomi Corp., speaks onstage at a news conference in New Delhi on last Thursday.

Bloomberg News

When the charismatic CEO of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi took the stage in New Delhi to launch its first product for the international market, he stumbled over his few set lines in English.

"Hello, how are you?" Lei Jun asked the Indian audience last Thursday, his first time using English in a product launch. "India Mi fans, I'm very happy to be in China,” he said, then corrected himself: “to be in India."

The crowd of Indian Xiaomi fans laughed, but ultimately roared its welcome.

Next, Mr. Lei announced a free Xiaomi smart wristband for each audience member. He sought to gauge the enthusiasm by shouting, with escalating volume, "Are you OK? Are you OK?"

That "Are you OK?" has turned into an overnight meme on Chinese social media. It's also set off a discussion in China about the hurdles Chinese executives face in the English-speaking global marketplace.

Mr. Lei, who launches products in China with great fanfare and showmanship, drew unfavorable comparisons online to Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook co-founder impressed an audience at Tsinghua University in Beijing last fall, delivering a speech and answering questions in Chinese.

"If Steve Jobs and Tim Cook say simple words like 'how are you' and 'thank you' in Chinese, you’d be excited and encouraging. Americans wouldn't laugh at them, either," wrote one user on Weibo’s Twitter-like social media site.

A video of Mr. Lei's English speech in New Delhi uploaded to website Youku on Monday garnered more than 440,000 views within 24 hours.

It became so viral on Weibo that Xiaomi president Lin Bin began a keynote speech at a Beijing conference Tuesday with comments on his boss’s English. "Everyone thinks it's pretty funny," said Mr. Lin. "But from this event, what I see is the evidence of a Chinese entrepreneur founding and building a company and getting stronger.

"To be able to stand on the stage and self-confidently say, 'Are you OK?' shows the entrepreneur's confidence," Mr. Lin said.

Some posts on Weibo made fun of Mr. Lei's speech, but many were supportive. More than 20,000 people shared one post of the video link captioned with, "Don't have the heart to watch it. Laugh to tears!" The most popular comment on that post was, "Having courage like this, his success doesn't surprise me at all."

Many Chinese executives don't speak English, although Alibaba's Jack Ma was an English teacher before founding his company. Lenovo's Yang Yuanqing learned English as an adult after acquiring IBM PC business a decade ago.

Lei took the flurry over his English in stride.

"In China's education system, we actually studied English from middle school all the way through college," he told The Wall Street Journal on Friday. "My English test scores were all very good, but it turns out it was only very good in the tests."

Lei later posted on Weibo, "I never imagined the video would go viral in China and the whole nation would be laughing." Some commenters jokingly responded, "Are you OK?"

Lei updated his post with, “Now there are more and more international Xiaomi fans. Indeed, I should learn English well and not let you down! Cheers!”